Yes, give them credit, we do have a touch of their class

WHILE our ecstatic neighbours across the Offa's Dyke border are still swinging low ontheir white-painted victory chariots, it could be tempting to look for famous English people who were in fact born in Wales.

WHILE our ecstatic neighbours across the Offa's Dyke border are still swinging low ontheir white-painted victory chariots, it could be tempting to look for famous English people who were in fact born in Wales.

There was Henry VII, of course, the founder of what was arguably England's greatest dynasty.

He was born in Pembroke Castle back in 1457, giving a distinctly Welshflavour to the march of the Tudors.

It could be argued that Henry's birth in Wales even gave that most quintessential of English kings, Henry VIII, the right on parentage grounds tohave represented Wales in hawking, horseback hunting or whatever the big mediaeval sporting equivalent of the day was.

But the issue of bringing in people to represent countries other than the ones in which they were born is a thorny one, particularly for Wales.

Remember Shane Howarth, Brett Sinkinson and "Grannygate"? Or how about Vinnie Jones's little-known "Grandad from North Wales".

As the Duke of Wellington famously once said, being born in a stable does not make you a horse.

Even in a week when it emerged that one of England's brightest young stars, Josh Lewsey, should have played for Wales having been brought up by a Welsh mother from Cwmllynfell, this is no time for churlishly examining the English blood for faint traces of Welshness.

Isn't it time that instead of trying to look for the Welsh in the English, we took a look at ourselves and examined our own English heritage?

With his charging runs, wonderful tries and emergence as the Rugby World Cup's top tackler, it has escaped many fans in red that Welsh pack leader Colin Charvis was in fact born in Sutton Coldfield in the Midlands.

And Iestyn Harris, after a period of being pilloried as he made the difficult transfer from the rugby league code to union, but who is now proclaimed at the age of 25, the "new Barry John," hails by birth from the very un-Wales-like Oldham.

Then there is Plaid Cymru's Dafydd Wigley, one of Wales's best known politicians, who was born in Derby in 1943.

And it still comes as a bit of a surprise to many that the man who was arguably the greatest politician in Welsh history, David Lloyd George, was born in England.

For the man who knew everyone's father however, it was only a fleeting time across the border as his father, a Pembrokeshire native, was the headmaster of a school in Manchester.

His father died when he was 18 months old and his mother moved to Llanystumdwy in Caernarfonshire, where her brother Richard Lloyd, the local shoemaker and baptist minister, supported her and her family.

One of the greatest surprises for followers of modern culture over the past few decades, however, could be the fact that "Welsh" actress Ruth Madoc, who played archetypal Valleys Girl Gladys Pugh in Hi-de-Hi, is, in fact, from the land of Anglia TV - Norwich.

The 60-year-old actress played the role of Gladys for eight years between 1980 and 1988, becoming a household name in the process.

The sitcom was set in the 1950s and followed the exploits of the quirky team at a Maplins holiday camp.

Gladys Pugh, the camp's chief yellowcoat, was described as the "vamp from the Valleys", a woman relentless in her pursuit of entertainment manager Jeffrey Fairbrother.

Even though she spent her very early days in Norwich, her parents moved to Llansamlet in Swansea where she was brought up, and she considers herself Welsh. With her husband and manager John Jackson she has now bought a house in Glynneath.

She said, "I have lived in Kent and in London, but I get a lot of work in Wales and I love the Welsh countryside. I grew up in Wales, I'm comfortable here."

While not wanting to make too many concessions to the English at a time when 1966 fever is back on our televisions, radios and in our London-based newspapers, it has to be said that even our national emblem, the leek, might have an English connotation.

It has been said that the leek became adopted as the Welsh national symbol after Welsh archers, mainly from Pembrokeshire, fought for the English at the famous victory over the French during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, wearing leeks on their lapels.

The idea was to sort out friend from foe and the Welsh archers were definitely friends of the English on that battlefield, their accurate arrows dispatching hundreds of armour-clad French knights.

Rugby itself of course, for so long Wales' national game, embraced and loved by generations of coal miners and steelworkers, started on a very English public school playing field.

William Webb Ellis, the man whose name adorned the trophy held aloft by World Cup-winning English skipper Martin Johnson in Australia on Saturday, picked up the ball during a soccer game and ran with it at Rugby School back in 1814 when he was 16.

The game has become a global franchise since then, but it still has the ability to stir the blood and make nation face nation in semi-peaceful conflict.

It is a telling statistic that in the Australia Rugby World Cup, played out in front of millions over the past six weeks, only Uruguay and Argentina drew their squads entirely from homegrown talent.

And it is not only in the professional age that players have represented countries other than those of their birth.

Welsh 1970s legend Graham Price, one of the "Viet Gwent" and the Pontypool Front Row made famous by Max Boyce, thanks to a military father, could have played for Egypt.

Heritage is a wonderful thing, but it's best not to look too deeply for it.